A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

One of the many islands of Boston Harbor is Castle Island, thoughfor many years it’s been “attached” to the South Boston mainlandand is reachable by foot. In fact it was a favorite meeting placeused by the reputed mob boss Whitey Bulger.

The first fortifications on the island were begun in 1634 andeventually they became Fort Independence, which has a long andfascinating history.

But for this Halloween I’m writing about a certain young soldierwho, according to Edward Rowe Snow in his book “The Islands ofBoston Harbor”, enlisted in the First Artillery on 26th May,1827 and was sent to Fort Independence where he served for fivemonths under the name Edgar A. Perry.

His real name was Edgar Allan Poe.

While there, Snow speculates, Poe would have heard about a fatalduel that took place on Christmas Eve seven years before in 1817between two officers which resulted in the death of a Lt. RobertMassie. Snow doesn’t give the name of the other officer involvedbut he tells about the burial of the dead man on the island andquotes the inscriptions on it. Lt. Massie’s remains and theheadstone, by the way, were moved three times and as of thetime that Mr.Snow was writing had ended up at the cemetery atFt. Devens in 1939. ((pp.68-69))

Snow and others over the years have pointed to the story of Lt.Massie’s death as the inspiration for “A Cask of Amontillado” butthere are few facts available. For one thing the identity of thesecond man varies from story to story. The basic story goes thatMassie’s opponent was a bully and that the dead lieutenant’sfriends took revenge by walling his killer up alive in one of thecasement walls. But again, there is no record showing an officermysteriously disappeared without a trace in the time afterMassie’s death.

Snow later in the chapter later says that an elderly man told himthat in 1905 a skeleton dressed in an old military uniform wasfound when a sealed casement was opened during repairs to thefort. They weren’t able to find out who it was and so it waseventually buried. (p 76)

So far I haven’t found anything online about the discovery andmost critics dismiss the story about the skeleton as folklore. Butwhether or not there was someone actually buried alive, it’s quitepossible Poe used some for the elements of the event in his story.

And even the dispute over the folktale is very Poe-like.

There may be another Boston area story that inspired Poe. Irecall reading once about somebody, the wife of the Governor ofthe Colony, I think, hosting a party or ball during an epidemic andthat Poe might have been inspired to write “The Masque of The Red Death” after hearing about it.

That concludes my Halloween postings. What better way thanto end with something about Edgar Allan Poe?

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

For many years the premier writer of books that deal with thefolklore and history of New England was Edward Rowe Snow.

When I was growing up in Boston and had three library brancheswithin walking distance I took out every one of his books theyhad on their shelves several times and read them sitting on thefront steps or lying on my bed in my room. Ghosts, pirates,shipwrecks, devastating storms: Mr. Snow made them come tolife in my imagination.

Besides writing books and delivering Christmas presents tolighthouse keepers and their families as “The Flying Santa”, healso wrote a column for the Quincy Patriot Ledger that recountedlegends of Boston and New England. As part of a program tosupport local high school newspapers the Ledger and Mr. Snowhosted a cruise around Boston Harbor for the school journalists.

I was lucky enough to go on one and get the chance to see hiscollection of pirate memorabilia such as the two bladed daggerand the silver plated human skull used as a drinking cup by somepirate captain. As the ship passed one of the Harbor Islands he'dtell us about some story or legend abou t it. I had a great time!

When I began working as a bookseller some eighteen years ago Iwas amazed to find out his books were nearly all out of print andwithin a few years they all were. Customers who’d grown upreading his books and column were disappointed as well so whenCommonwealth Editions brought out new editions of some of hisbooks they became some of the best selling local interest booksin our store.

Commonwealth published six titles:

A Pilgrim Returns to Cape CodPirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic CoastThe Islands of Boston HarborWomen of the SeaMysteries and Adventures Along the Atlantic Coast.Storms and Shipwrecks of New EnglandThe Lighthouses of New England

They all first appeared as hardcovers with brown jackets and theStorms and Lighthouses books are also available in paperbackeditions. Each book has updates to the stories written by JeffreyD’Entremont and also include many photographs.

Needless to say I’ve bought my copies but I’m afraid it looks likethese editions will be going out of print soon . I highly recommendyou hunt one down at your local bookstore if you can before theyare gone and enjoy a great storyteller.

There’s a story in one of Snow’s book that involves Edgar AllenPoe and I’ll discuss that next. But this concludes my survey ofbooks you might enjoy reading for Halloween.

Monday, October 29, 2007

There’s a great children’s picture book “86 Years” by MelindaBoroson that traces a family of Red Sox fans from 1918 downto 2004.The pictures start with the great grandfather and hisfamily at the park, and as the years pass so do the generations.grandparents and parents age and eventually are succeeded bytheir children and grandchildren as clothes and hairstyles of thefamily change with the times. There’s some text as well but itwas those images that I think about when I remember the RedSox winning the World Series in 2004.

Now it’s three years later and they’ve done it again. My Momwould have been ecstatic and Dad would have just grunted hisapproval in that taciturn Maine way of his.

Sports in New England and in Boston are more than pastimes.People’s memories of our teams and players are in many casesintricately bound with memories of our childhood and our family.

My father took me and two friends to a Sox game for my 12thbirthday in 1960 and so I have the memory of seeing in personTed Williams playing in his last year. I also have the memory ofthe lady sitting a few rows down in front of us in the center fieldbleachers who kept up a running commentary that Stan Musialwas a better player then Ted, and how after Ted made a greatcatch against the left field wall some beer was “accidentally”spilled on the lady.

I got to see John Havlicek and the Celtics at old Boston Gardenagainst the Philadelphia Warriors a few years later, a trip madememorable by the flat tire on the way home to Abington. Myfriend’s Dad had taken us to the game and we all pitched in to getthe tire changed while we discussed if Havlicek or Larry Siegfriedwas the better player.

There was the night we watched Pudge Fisk’s World Serieshomerun and the church bells in Marshfield rang to celebrate.

I saw Bobby Orr’s dramatic Stanley Cup winning goal over theSt. Louis Blues on the tv at the end of the bar at Morey Pearl’sRestaurant the night I was working.

I also recall my sister jinxing the Bruins one year because shewas tired of all the hockey we were watching. She told us thatKen Dryden was going to beat them and win the Stanley Cupfor the Canadiens and they did. Ah, the heresy!!

I took my kidbrother to see the Patriots play. His favoriteplayers were Russ Francis and Mosi Tatupu. Now Mosi'sson is a player for the Seattle Seahawks. Could that manyyears have passed?

When Dennis Johnson passed away earlier this year, I thoughtof my Mom. Dennis was one of her favorite players on the greatCeltic teams of the 70’s and 80’s, the other being Larry Birdbecause he wasn’t afraid to dive on the floor after a loose ball.

A well known Boston sports talkshow host used to say that whenhe died, the inscription on his headstone would say:

“He never saw the Red Sox win it all.”

Well, now he’s seen them do it twice.

But my parents both left us before the Pats won a Superbowl orthe Sox won the Series. My niece and nephews have never seenthe Celtics or Bruins win championships.

I’ve seen them all win.

It’s fitting, I think, that the Red Sox play music by the DropkickMurphy’s, a local Celtic rock band. That’s their song “Shipping Up to Boston” that Papelbon did his impromptu Irish jig to whenthey were celebrating first making the playoffs and then theWorld Series. Sox fans like the Irish were long suffering andpoetic in recounting the long saga of their tireless devotion to thecause. They treasure the triumphs, mourn the defeats, andremember the heroes of yesteryear.

And when they party, they party.

All of these players and teams were and are things that bringfamilies of sports fans together and give us memories wecherish.

As I’ve mentioned before, whenever a book comes into the storethat covers the colonial and 19th century American historicalperiods, I look through it to see if a relative might be mentionedin it.

One such book is Stephen Hawley Martin’s “A Witch in the Family: an award-winning author investigates his ancestor‘s trial and execution.”I have two Salem witches among my ancestory, Mary TownesEstey (or Eastey) and Rebecca Blake, so I was naturallyinterested in the book. Mr. Martin’s Salem ancestress wasSusannah North Martin who was hung on June 29th, 1692.Apparently her story was well known in his family so hisbook is not a genealogical investigation so much as one of thewhole Salem witch trial phenomenon, and while I don’t findmyself agreeing with some of his views, they are interesting .The Appendix contains documents from Susannah NorthMartin’s case, such as the arrest warrant and testimony at hertrial and also the text of Cotton Mather’s tract on witchcraft,“Memorable Providences”.

One jarring note: the blurb on the outside rear book cover refersto the Salem Witch Trials as the “ultimate reality show.”Another book on witches is Edward Lodi’s “Witches of PlymouthCounty”. Although the events in Salem and Connecticut are morenotorious there were people believed to be witches in thePlymouth area as well, and some of their stories are here. Mr.Lodi has written quite a few books on occult events, such as “The Haunted Pram” and “Ghosts From King Philip’s War”, and alongwith tales of actual people there is sometimes a eerie short storyor two set in the locale.

Finally, there are the books of author Joseph Citro, such as“Passing Strange” and “Cursed in New England: Stories of Damned Yankees”. He also writes horror fiction but his occultbooks have been fairly popular in our store, and the best sellingone is “Weird New England” , part of a series of books written bydifferent authors that are guidebooks to the more offbeat traveldestinations nationwide. ( “Weird New York”, “Weird Michigan”,etc.). It’s the only hardcover out of all the books I’ve mentionedso far and it’s sold the most copies.

As I’ve said, most of these books are paperback with prices under$20 and there are others out there like them written about otherparts of the country. Go haunt a bookstore for them!

The “Haunted Bookstore” will conclude with a post on one of myfavorite local authors, Edward Rowe Snow.

Friday, October 26, 2007

I did some grocery shopping today and fell prey to the store’s“Crazy Friday” offer of a box of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolatewith Mini Marshmallows for .98 cents. I’m on vacation nextweek so I decided to treat myself to an occasional cup of hotchocolate while reading a book or writing.

The next aisle over had a display of jars of Marshmallow Fluffand Skippy Peanut Butter. That and the cocoa brought backmemories of when I was around 6 or 7 years old. When I wasin the first grade my lunch of choice that I carried to school inmy Roy Rogers Lunchbox nearly everyday was a Fluffernuttersandwich.

A Fluffernutter was and is made with Fluff and peanut butter, inmy case, Teddy Peanut Butter, because the Cisco Kid on tv saidit was the best peanut butter in the world.

I ate Fluffernutter’s every day until finally one day I couldn’tstand the sight of them and I switched to pb and j’s. TeddyPeanut Butter was replaced by Skippy when The Cisco Kid wentoff the air. And when we moved from Malden to Dorchester, thelunch box gave way to more grownup brown paper bags.

But the hot chocolate continued on a little while: either Baker’sor Hershey’s with a big tablespoonful of Fluff riding on top thatMom made on snowy days after we shoveled. We lived only a fewmiles from Lower Mills where the Baker Chocolate Factory wasand on a damp day you could smell chocolate in the air.

Eventually that changed as well. Our family gave way to theallure of advertising, and Hershey’s gave way to Nestle’s Quick,then to coffee as I grew older. And let’s face it, Swiss Miss CocoaMix is a lot easier to fix than making cocoa the old fashioned way.So I’ll drink it as I think about those days as a kid.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Sitting here on my day off basking in the afterglow of last night’sRed Sox victory as I drink a cup of coffee and surf my fellowgenealogy blogger’s sites.

I’m glad that Randy Seaver and his family have been sparedfrom the fires in the San Diego area. His post on Genea-Musings about blog post statistics made me check mine. I regularly checkthe Visitor Activity stats at StatCounter to see what the dailyactivity has been but I haven’t really checked the KeywordAnalysis or Keyword Activity since “flutaphones” seems usuallyto be at the top of the list.

Today, though, I found that “Amos Hastings” had been themost used term at 6, (albeit it was only by two visitors) followedby “ruth perley ames murder” with 4.

However, if I add the 2 for “flutaphones” with the 2 for “picturesof flutaphones”, that puts it right up there for a tie at second place.It is nice though to think that maybe something I’ve posted hereabout my ancestors might help others of their descendants.

Dick Eastman’s post about “jump drives” prompted me to checkthe K-Mart across the plaza from my store and I now own a 1gbflash drive that is small enough to carry around in my shirtpocket if I so choose. It just amazes me that it was so inexpensive($19.99) and that it has so much space on so small a device. It’smore memory than I had on the hard drives of my first two desktop computers--combined! I’ve already backed up my genealogyfiles on it as well as the family photos I’ve scanned.

Finally, last night I downloaded the Revolutionary War PensionFile of my 4th great grandfather Moses Coburn at Footnote.com and looked through them this morning. Among the documentsthere’s a “schedule” of his belongings:1 Cow $201 Hog 81 Sheep & lamb 2Table 0.50Crockery ware 1.50glass ware 0.50Pot & kettle 1.50Chair 1.004 dung hill Fowls .80______$35.80

As an aside, the dollar amounts on the document were furtherover to the right from the items listed. For some reason, I cannever get these sort of lists to publish here the way I enter them.

I immediately had to google “dung hill fowls” and found that theywere chickens. Then looking at the list again, the thought struckme: where’s the bed? Given that Moses’ family at the timeincluded his wife Esther Spaulding and three of their children, (theoldest 14 and the youngest 5) they’d have needed beds, right?

Monday, October 22, 2007

After having spent several hours in hunting for my lost wallet(Ifound it, btw) I sat down here with a cup of coffee and calmeddown by browsing genealogy blogs.

First off, I have been remiss in not mentioning that the 34thCarnival of Genealogy is out and once again Jasia’s call for articlesresulted in great reading. There are the usual fine contributorsbut there are also some new names. Thomas Wheatley’s list ofsuperstitions at Family History Quick Start made me think ofsome I recall from my mom’s Irish family. Bob Frank’smemories of his childhood Halloweens at the Itawamba History Review made me grin. In fact, there’s a whole slew of posts onthat subject that brought back some memories of my own andI’ll try to post about them soon. A lot of good readingas always and if you haven’t read the CoG before, you should!

Other interesting new posts this morning included Tim Abbott’sat “Walking the Berkshires” concerning an Abbot(t) relative’sties to Roger’s Rangers from the French and Indian War. Andisn’t it a great time to be a sports fan in New England, Tim?

Terry Thornton over at "Hill Country of Monroe County,Mississippi” posted a picture of a friend's grandmother and asailor in Smithville, Mississippi 1943 and another of World WarII sugar ration coupons and adds some of his memories of thetime.

Finally, there’s posts at various blogs about the new ties betweenA*******.com and the NEHGS. Since I can’t afford the WorldDeluxe membership in the first place, the news really doesn’teffect me. If I can find the money in my budget at some point I’lljoin the NEHGS again at the most affordable membership levelbut that’s not likely to happen until next year.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Continuing in the Halloween vein(so to speak) for this month,there is another story from my days as a camp counselor onCape Cod that if I’d thought about I would have also submittedto the Carnival of Genealogy this month.

We had counselors from all over the country and one year fromother nations. This particular summer, one of the staff was fromMinnesota. He’d never seen the ocean so part of the reason he’dtaken a summer job in Massachusetts was to see the Atlantic.Since we hiked the kids down to Dennis Beach several timesduring the summer Gary accomplished his goal early on, but afew of us decided we’d take him down to Provincetown so hecould tell the folks back home he’d been as far out to the edgeof the States as he could get without leaving land.

This was back in the late `60’s. We were a bit more innocent backthen and so four of us thought nothing of hitchhiking on theMidCape Highway. Luckily for us we made it safely down toPtown and spent the day walking around the town, poking aboutin the great old Army-Navy Surplus Store on the main street,and then finding and eating the cheapest meal available since weweren’t exactly in a high paying job.

It was late afternoon when we started back for the highway. NowI’m not sure of the exact location, because it’s forty years since ithappened, but we took a shortcut through a graveyard and aswe walked along the road we looked at some of the headstones.

And that’s when I saw it: a headstone with my name on it.

“William West”.

You can imagine the jokes from the others. It did spook me outa little bit but I laughed it off and we eventually moved on to thehighway to “thumb” our way back up the Cape to Brewster.Since drivers were less likely to stop for four hitchers than two,we split up into two pairs and made plans to rendezvous at ourexit off the highway.

My companion and I were picked up by a pair of sailors who’dbeen sightseeing the hippies at Provincetown as well as doing alittle drinking and it wasn’t long before I realized that perhapsthe one driving the car was a bit drunk and his friend was a wholelot more drunk. He had a bottle and offered us a drink and whenwe declined, he got insistent about us taking a swig. So we did.

By this time I already flashed back to that gravestone with myname on it. Was it some sort of warning? So I did the sensiblething. I lied and told the driver that the next exit was where wehad to get off. The other counselor nodded when he asked if wewere sure. He laughed, drove by it, and eventually let us out twomore exits up in what they must have thought was a cool joke.We eventually caught a another ride, met up with the others,and made it back to camp safely.

Apparently the sailors made it back to Boston alright as wellsince we didn’t hear about any sailors killed in car crashes. And Itook a bit more ribbing over “my” grave.

It was the last time I hitchhiked on Cape Cod. The next summerthat I worked there I had my own car.

And occasionally I think about that headstone. I don’t recallanything about the dates or the inscription. Maybe someday I’lllook up the information.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Remember what I said in the first post in this series about takingthe word “haunted” and adding a state or city’s name to it for aGoogle search for a book with that title?

Well, if you search for “Haunted Massachusetts” you’ll findthere’s two books with that title: the one by Cherie Revai I’vepreviously mentioned and another by Thomas D’Agostino.It has a stark black and white cover illustration of a lighthousestation and is one of three books he’s written on the paranormal,the other three being “Haunted Rhode Island” , “Haunted NewHampshire” and “Pirate Ghosts and Phantom Ships” .

From a local bookseller and resident’s perspective theMassachusetts book interests me because of its section on theBridgewater Triangle and on ghosts at my old alma mater,Bridgewater State College. I have to admit that I’m a bitskeptical about the ghost at the Student Union Center becausethe building was completed after I graduated and it just doesn’tseem right that a place that’s only 35 years old on a campus over160 years old would be a place that is haunted!

Now if it was in the old Maxwell Library building, that I couldbelieve!

At any rate, Mr. D’Agostino’s book explores an interesting varietyof reportedly haunted locales such as an antiques shop inPlymouth and the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River. All four ofhis books are published by Schiffer Books in soft cover and theprices on the three New England books are $12.95 while thenewer pirate book is $14.95.

Schiffer also publishes other regional paranormal books in thesame price range, including books on ghosts in cities such asBaltimore, New Orleans, and Austin.

And remember, all are orderable at your local bookstores if theydon’t already have them in stock. Go haunt a bookstore!

Next in this series, I’ll discuss a book that has a genealogy andfamily history connection to the Salem Witch Trials.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Back in my college days, I spent three summers as a campcounselor at Camp Mitton in Brewster, Mass down on Cape Cod.

One night during my last summer there in 1970, I was sitting atthe Indian Council Ring with the campers and councilors as wetold stories around a campfire. One of the kids started telling astory about the Black Hell Hounds that chased a murderer’sghost on the dirt roads by the camp and I had to grin. I knew thestory well.

In fact, I was the one who’d first told it.

Two years before I was trying to come up with the a story to tellat the campfire that hadn’t already been told and a combinationof things led me to make up a new one.

One of the elements was the camp’s location. There were severaldirt roads that wound their way through old cranberry bogs,some of which with old buildings nearby. We occasionally took thekids on hikes down those roads and so the locale of the storywould be familiar.

Another element was that one of the councilors had snorkeled inthe lake the camp was situated on and found an old buckboardtype wagon on the lake floor. Everyone had wondered how it evergot there.

And the third element? That would be Queenie the black LabradorRetriever and two of her grown offspring who frequently hungaround the camp mooching scraps and attention from the kids.And so, I came up with this story:

“Many years ago there lived down by the cranberry bogs a manand his wife. They had no children, and the cranberry farmer’s wife was lonely so the farmer bought her three black hounds to keep her company and protect her when he was away from the farm.

Things went well for several years until bad weather caused the cranberry crop to be a small one and the farmer fell into debt. He took to drinking and when his wife asked him to stop they would argue. One night the man hit his wife and the dogs who were trained to protect her attacked the farmer. In a rage he grabbed his axe and killed the dogs and then his wife, and then buried them all in an unmarked grave somewhere along the dirt roads through the bogs. If neighbors asked he told themhis wife had left him and gone off to her parents’ home in Boston.

Then one night exactly a year to the night later of the murder the farmer was driving his wagon down a dirt road, the very same road that ran right through the center of our camp, when he heard the sound of hounds baying behind him. He looked over hisshoulder and by the light of the moon he saw the red eyes of the ghostly three hounds racing after him in the moonlight.

He whipped his horse to run faster, but still the hounds came closer, and closer, and CLOSER until suddenly the wagon hit the bump in the road just past where the softball field was today and the horse broke free, while the wagon went racing down into the lake, taking the farmer with it to drown.

And some said that every year the murderous farmer’s ghost could be seen in his wagon being chased down the dirt road by the three Black Hounds.”

Not exactly Poe but it worked well in the dark by the campfire,especially with Queenie nearby begging for marshmallows.

I didn’t work at the camp the summer after I first told the storybut apparently it had been told by one of the campers that year,and then the year I returned, another camper told it. I don’tknow if it continued to be told, since that was the last summer Ispent there. But if Queenie and her descendants were around Isuspect it might have been told again.

I think this must be how a lot of legends and ghost stories musthave started, a mixture of the commonplace with fantasy.

Oh. Did I mention that here in my apartment complex nearlyforty years later, my next door neighbor’s pet is a LabradorRetriever?

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Over the years working in a bookstore I’ve stocked and soldmany titles that are brought in for the Halloween season:books on ghosts, witches, and eerie events in Massachusettsand New England. It’s amazing how many books are out theredealing with such topics for every part of the country. I haveto confess that since my genealogy bug bit me I tend to lookthrough these books to see if any of my ancestors or theirrelatives are mentioned.

Try this: take the name of your state, put the word haunted infront of it and then google the phrase. Then try the same thingusing the name of a major city in your state and the words"Ghosts of”. You should find many titles, usually put out bya regional press and written by local authors.

I’ll try to list some of these over the next few weeks andoccasionally comment on some of the stories in them. But ifyou are looking for a book that has stories from all over thecountry, I’d recommend the books by Michael Normanand Beth Scott, such as their Haunted Heartland and otherswhich are published by larger companies and may be easierto find quickly.

One of the popular books in my local interest section isCheri Revai’s Haunted Massachusetts. This is publishedby Stackpole Books and is one of 11 in a series that coversNortheast and Mid-Atlantic states ((All of them are paperbackand priced at $9.95)). This doesn’t surprise me as it’s one ofthe two books in the store that mentions the BridgewaterTriangle(which on this end of the Triangle is sometimescalled the Abington Triangle). Many of the stories arefamiliar ones but if you haven’t explored the supernaturalin Massachusetts, this is a good introduction that’s an easyread.

I might note that Stackpole doesn’t have a book as yet onhaunted New Hampshire or Rhode Island, so maybe youcan do the New Hampshire book, Janice!

Oh, and I’d like to urge you all to patronize your localbookstores, large or small, in shopping for any of thebooks I mention. Online shopping is nice but it’s taking atoll on brick and mortar stores, especially the smaller localstores.

Sometimes, the pieces of the genealogy puzzle just seem to fittogether with a life of their own.

I decided to search Footnote.com again for my ancestor AmosUpton in the Revolutionary War Pension File. He hadn’t beenthere the first time I’d looked but Footnote is still updatingthose files so I checked, and voila…there it was. As I read itI found he’d been a resident of Norway, Maine which I hadn’tknown before.

So while I downloaded the images of the file, I did a search onGoogle and found A History of Norway, Me. by David Noyeson Googlebooks. There is quite a bit of information about Amosin there as well as some on his son Francis. This brought me toAmos’ granddaughter, Hannah, who I didn’t know much aboutother than she had married Cyrus Moore and that their daughter(my great great grandmother) Betsey Jane had been born inWaterford, Maine.

The Amos Upton file was still dl so I tried searching Googlebooksfor Hannah Upton & Waterford. I found The History of Waterford:Oxford County, Maine by Henry Pelt Warren and on pp 273-274in the Records of Families I found a Hannah Upton who married aCyrus, son of Stephen Moore and Millie Davis. There were twoyounger Moore children listed, daughters Betsey and Jane.

Perhaps Betsey Jane Moore had been named after her aunts?

By this time the Amos Upton file was all downloaded so I decidedI’d blog about this and then turn in for the night. I’ll try to findmore Moores in the next day or so, but if this pans out I now knowthe names of Cyrus Moore’s parents, which I hadn’t before tonight.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Another leisurely blog brunch. One of the things only a bachelorcould get away with on a day off!

The 33rd Carnival of Genealogy is up and once again Jasia hasgathered a bunch of interesting posts, this time on the subjectof weddings.

The next CoG has a Halloween theme with a call for posts onstories about the supernatural or eerie in your family. If youhaven’t checked into the CoG yet, you should, because it’s agreat way to discover other genealogy blogs!

On another front, I recently bought two genealogy or historyrelated books at work.

The first is Evidence: Citation and Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Shown Mills. I need to start getting mysources and citations into shape and this book is mentioned overand over again by my fellow genealogy bloggers. All I can say isthat after looking through it, I really, really have a lot of workahead of me.

The second book is Diane Rapaport’s The Naked Quaker: TrueCrimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England. All of the stories in it are new to me but some werepreviously published in "New England Ancestors" magazinewhich is published by the NEHGS.

No, Ralph Ellinwood’s case didn’t make the book but it is full offascinating stories that shed light not only on the court system ofcolonial New England but also on the society of the period.

And since we’re coming up on Halloween, I’ll be doing someposts on some books I sell at the bookstore that deal with thesupernatural side of New England, as well as a post or two aboutthe witches in my family!

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

As I’ve mentioned before, when not wracking my brain foranther genealogy use for a flutaphone, I work as a booksellerat the local location for a national bookstore chain. From timeto time I’ll be posting something about books I’ve seen orread that relate to genealogy.

So how about a little mystery?

I was walking past the new paperbacks table and the title ofone of the new books caught my eye: Sins of the Fathersby Patricia Sprinkle. A quick glance at the descriptionon the back cover told me the book is the second in a newseries of mysteries involving genealogy and family history.The first book is entitled Death on the Family Tree.

I want to find the first book before I buy the second, but itdoes look interesting. I'll let you all know what I think onceI read them.